Let’s follow U of M’s budgeting lead.

In the past week, the University of Minnesota under President Robert Bruininks has been publicly wrestling with the inevitable cuts that are coming as a result of Minnesota’s staggering budget shortfall.

The U of M should be given credit for trying to plan ahead.

Other areas of state government would do well to follow its lead.

At the U of M, there is talk of pay freezes, of staff cuts, of furloughs and reduced hours. That means fewer services and an inevitable trickle down to the classroom level.

But such is the plight of a state-funded university in a state whose budget has run dry.

Meanwhile, over at the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, the regents just handed Chancellor James McCormick a $40,000 bonus.

Yep, as one state university tries to figure out cuts that amount to bloodletting, another scoffs at the impending financial disaster by giving what amounts to a state-sponsored CEO bonus.

In an out-of-touch, nearly insulting gesture the trustees defended their unbelievable decision by saying they didn’t give McCormick his full bonus of $50,000.

The MnSCU trustees should be summarily dismissed for such an incredible lack of judgment.

As the state reels from the effects of a recession, the trustees spend public money on bonuses as other employees’ wages are frozen and tuition is on the rise.

Meanwhile, the MnSCU trustees, led by David Olson, defend this kind of behavior, likening the world of higher education to the business world.

In one respect, Olson is right: This smacks of the same CEO-bonus system that has outraged the public since Wall Street’s collapse.

But in another respect, MnSCU cannot be like some private businesses. It is funded in no small part by taxes and tuition. The trustees shouldn’t have the discretion to give bonuses like this — or like they did to nearly all MnSCU presidents — with such severe economic pressures.

Last year, we called for greater accountability and for hearings on the bonuses.

The Legislature, including Sen. Sharon Erickson Ropes, DFL-Winona, who sits on the Senate’s Higher Education Committee, refused to have any substantive hearings on the bonus issue.

We heard plenty of rhetoric and politicians who were outraged, but there was precious little action, especially from those who, like Ropes, had the power to do something but didn’t.

The next Legislature will certainly have more cuts, more tough decisions to make.

Yet there’s at least one easy decision out there for legislators — cut MnSCU, and start with the central office and administration.

There’s got to be a lot of fat to be trimmed in a state-run institution that can find $76,000 over the course of two years to pay an executive who makes nearly a half-million dollars yearly anyway.

— Winona Daily News, June 23